Transfiguration

Pastor Ross Yamamoto opens with his years in sales: surf gear, advertising, credit cards, then sales manager in the car business. His kids learned the assumptive close and would skip right past their 11 o’clock curfew and ask whether they could come home at 12 or 1. The answer was always no. He learned that information alone doesn’t sell anything. People pay for what they value, and the customer who offers 30,000 for a 50,000 car has “champagne taste but with a beer budget.”

Jesus, Ross says, was no salesman. Leave your career and your family, pick up your cross, expect to be hated and maybe killed. “That’s not a good sales pitch.” What Jesus does show is infinite value, and Ross points to Psalm 103: “forget not all his benefits.”

He challenges a common idea in church, that we serve only out of love and want nothing back. That isn’t entirely biblical, he says, and it isn’t a prosperity gospel either. Salvation is a gift by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Rewards relate to what believers do afterward, the fruit that salvation produces. He moves quickly through passages on rewards, from Matthew 5 and 6 to 1 Corinthians 3 and Philippians 3. Our stocks, 401ks and houses all have “a countdown clock,” and only what is eternal will remain.

Matthew 16 is the hinge of the gospel. Jesus says he must suffer, Peter tells him he doesn’t need to, and Jesus rebukes him with the same words he used against the devil’s offer in Matthew 4. Then he promises to repay each person for what they have done (16:27). Six days later he takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain.

Ross reads Matthew 17:1-8 alongside Luke 9. The Greek word for transfigured gives us “metamorphosis.” Moses and Elijah talk with Jesus about his departure, his exodus, while the disciples are fighting sleep. Peter, a “Chihuahua” of energy, offers to build tents, likely thinking of the Feast of Tabernacles and a kingdom set up now. The Father interrupts him. His words echo Psalm 2, Isaiah 42:1 and Deuteronomy 18:15, so the law, the prophets and the writings all land on Jesus. The terrified disciples look up and see Jesus only.

Ross closes with 2 Peter 1, Colossians 3 and 2 Corinthians 4. Everyone suffers, he says, but believers “suffer unto something.” He reads Revelation 19:6-8, where the bride is given fine linen, bright and pure, much like the white clothes the disciples saw on Jesus, and leads the church into communion.